Brace yourself. Hollywood is turning it up to 11.

With summer almost behind us and the holidays dead ahead, it’s time for the eclectic movie magic of autumn, when late-arriving crowd-pleasers light up screens alongside the earliest of award-season hopefuls.

With Labor Day serving as the traditional starting pistol to the fall season, things get started in earnest next week with the locally shot “Spinal Tap” sequel. From there, it runs straight through to the arrival of John M. Chu’s “Wicked” follow-up, ushering in the holiday movie season a week before Thanksgiving.

Squeezed in between are all manner of cinematic hopefuls.

To help sort through it all, here are seven films due in the next two months that caught this movie critic’s eye, along with a few “Plan B” picks for those who like

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